Leveraging technology to improve employee motivation

One of the most important lessons in managing a team is to never underestimate the value of employee morale. How engaged and driven your team members are affects their productivity, as well as their willingness to correct their misgivings and challenge themselves.

If you want to find the right strategies for improving employee motivation, consider your team’s needs, goals, personalities, and other characteristics. If your team is composed of young or tech-savvy individuals, then you’re likely to get the best outcomes by using the technologies your team members use.

Here are four techniques to keep your team members driven using technology:

1. Gamify otherwise boring activities

One of the best ways to keep employees engaged is to gamify different processes. This means incorporating game elements, such as points, achievements, and leaderboards.

For instance, to train your staff on new software, you can divide the subject into several segments. Completing one segment gives your staff a point, but to do so, they need to complete a challenge, such as a short quiz about the software. You can set a deadline, by which time all participants’ points are tallied and the one with the highest score is declared the winner.

Gamification taps into people’s love for fun and competition to keep them motivated to achieve a certain goal. With a generous deadline, gamification also allows participants to learn at their own pace and convenience.

How engaged and driven your team members are affects their productivity, as well as their willingness to correct their misgivings and challenge themselves.

2. Take advantage of mobile technology

With the wide variety of mobile apps available today, it’s become much easier to incorporate mobile devices into your business processes. For instance, accessing and working on spreadsheets through a smartphone is possible with mobile app versions of Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel.

This approach not only ensures your staff are using devices they like and are comfortable with, but that they are always connected to the rest of the team wherever they are. However, you need to make sure everyone in your team exercises BYOD best practices, such as separating personal and company data. Additionally, you must set protocols in case they lose their phone, to minimize the risk of a data breach.

3. Embrace flexible working options

Having to follow a single travel routine day in and day out — especially when it involves drudgery like waiting long hours in dreadful traffic — can be demotivating. This is why giving your staff the freedom to work remotely can boost morale. Saving money on gas and commuting expenses is also a bonus.

There are several technologies that can help you develop an effective flexible remote work arrangement. You’ll need communication apps like Slack, which enable your team to chat and share files with one another in real time. Meanwhile, cloud-based collaboration solutions, such as Google Docs, enable users to securely collaborate on business files.

4. Promote healthy work-life balance

Millennials, which compose 50% of the current workforce, favor companies and job positions that enable them to pursue a healthy work-life balance. If you want your millennial employees to stay and thrive in your company, they need to be able to build a career while having enough free time to do the things they love.

To promote work-life balance, you can turn to technologies that prevent people from overworking themselves unnecessarily. Automated solutions, such as accounting software, make it possible to process finance documents without the need for manual data entry. Automation allows your team to finish their tasks faster, all while reducing the risk of making costly mistakes.

At Cutting Edge Network Technologies, our team of experts can help you find the right solutions to keep your team driven and efficient. Download this free eBook today and discover how our services can enhance your company’s productivity,